Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: In today's episode, We're going to cover a unique film
Speaker 2: that I've wanted to cover for a long time here
Speaker 2: on the show. It's nineteen seventy four Space is the Place,
Speaker 2: starring and built around the visionary, experimental jazz composer and
Speaker 2: band leader Son Raw. There's nothing else out there quite
Speaker 2: like it, just like there has never been anyone else
Speaker 2: quite like Sun Raw. So I'm really looking forward to
Speaker 2: discussing this one. Joe, had you seen the movie before?
Speaker 3: No, I had never seen the movie before, And what
Speaker 3: a treat. I loved it. I thought this was great.
Speaker 3: It's totally unique. I've never seen a movie like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it is quite a treat. In its best moments,
Speaker 2: I think Space is the Place delivers the kind of
Speaker 2: avant garde surrealism that you would find in certainly nineteen
Speaker 2: seventies cinema such as Jo Darowski's Holy Mountain, while also
Speaker 2: channeling various works of contemporary and classic science fiction. Certainly
Speaker 2: early scenes also bring to mind seventy two silent running,
Speaker 2: you know, where we have these sort of artificial forests
Speaker 2: or some sort of an alien landscape that we're visiting.
Speaker 2: And of course all these examples speak to something about
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies and often something to do with dislocation
Speaker 2: in the early nineteen seventies. Meanwhile, there are other elements
Speaker 2: again of spaces the place that harken to B movie
Speaker 2: science fiction in the fifties and sixties, and all of
Speaker 2: this while providing a platform for sun Raw to express
Speaker 2: his own particular philosophy on personal identity, creative liberation, mythology,
Speaker 2: and above all, the spiritual power of music. Speaking of music,
Speaker 2: it is worth noting that this is, in a very
Speaker 2: limited way, a concert film, or more to the point,
Speaker 2: it's a project that kind of started out as an
Speaker 2: attempt to do some sort of a concert film too.
Speaker 2: I think the earliest idea was, let's get Sun Raw
Speaker 2: and his orchestra inside a planetarium and they'll do a show.
Speaker 2: There'll be lights, and we'll film it. That never came
Speaker 2: to fruition, but that project idea ended up becoming Space
Speaker 2: as the place. It ended up becoming a narrative film
Speaker 2: that has sequences of actual solar orchestra performance, but also
Speaker 2: has this narrative structure that in times also has elements
Speaker 2: of say, black exploitation cinema of the seventies, but also
Speaker 2: again keeps using these sci fi and surrealist elements as well.
Speaker 2: So when this film is firing in all cylinders, it's
Speaker 2: just absolutely mesmerizing, offering a sort of crystallization of some
Speaker 2: of Sunraw's cosmic afro futurist ideas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are a lot of parts of this movie
Speaker 3: where soun Raw seems to I was gonna say, break character,
Speaker 3: but I guess that's to the extent that he is
Speaker 3: playing a character in the movie and is not just
Speaker 3: speaking for himself. I do think there is some element
Speaker 3: of performance, but also he is putting a lot of
Speaker 3: his real self and his real thoughts into the movie
Speaker 3: from what I can tell, But there is a lot
Speaker 3: of Sunraw just speaking his ideas in some monologues that
Speaker 3: occur within scenes or at least are intercut with scenes,
Speaker 3: but feel almost just improvised. He's sort of like sharing
Speaker 3: his thoughts or kind of commenting on the plot of
Speaker 3: the movie, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, in the nature of these little monologues, they
Speaker 2: feel again, they feel almost improved. Though. I'm to understand
Speaker 2: Sonraw wrote all of his lines and actually, you know,
Speaker 2: wrote them out before delivering them. But yeah, there's almost
Speaker 2: kind of a documentarian feel to his presentation at times,
Speaker 2: and then his whole character is bound up like in
Speaker 2: this sense of, you know, a very wise figure, almost
Speaker 2: kind of a Buddha like figure who is sharing wisdom
Speaker 2: with you, but also laying out riddles and asking questions
Speaker 2: of you and so forth in a very tantalizing way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: Now, there have been multiple books written about sun Raw,
Speaker 2: and several of these seem very well regarded. I was
Speaker 2: reading through Space is the Place, The Lives and Times
Speaker 2: of Sun Raw by jazz historian John Zwed, in addition
Speaker 2: to DVD extras on Space Is the Place and a
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty musical documentary piece titled Sun Raw A Joyful Noise,
Speaker 2: which you can find in various places. I watched that
Speaker 2: one an Eternal Family, but I think you can also
Speaker 2: find it like on YouTube.
Speaker 3: I didn't have time to watch the whole thing, but
Speaker 3: you shared it with me. You shared the part where
Speaker 3: Sunraw is warming and he's doing this thing on the
Speaker 3: keyboard where he starts spinning around in circles and ultimentually
Speaker 3: hitting the keyboard each time he revolves. Impressive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, A Joyful Noise has some great sit downs bits
Speaker 2: with Son Raw, and there's also bits where he's like
Speaker 2: wandering around the ancient Egyptian segment of a museum, perhaps
Speaker 2: in Philadelphia, I'm not sure where, you know, talking about
Speaker 2: some of his concepts. But also some great performance footage,
Speaker 2: including this scene where he's just tearing into the synthesizer.
Speaker 2: Just passion on display there. But the book by Zwet
Speaker 2: is quite good. He was born in thirty six. The
Speaker 2: author actually saw Sun Raw in his orchestra play, and
Speaker 2: as he points out in the book, like Raw. He
Speaker 2: grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, later lived in Philadelphia like Raw.
Speaker 2: So he was like, I was the ideal person to
Speaker 2: write a book about him, while also acknowledging that this
Speaker 2: was like the first biography that he wrote. Generally not
Speaker 2: advisable to pick somebody who say denies having been born
Speaker 2: or or is very cagey about various aspects of their
Speaker 2: terrestrial biography. Yeah, but it's a great book, and I
Speaker 2: wanted to share just a couple of excerpts from it.
Speaker 2: Particularly there's a part where he's talking about what it
Speaker 2: was like to go and see Sun Raw and his
Speaker 2: band the Orchestra perform in the late sixties and early seventies,
Speaker 2: you know, basically the time period around and just before
Speaker 2: the release of this film.
Speaker 3: And just as a bit of context by there was
Speaker 3: sort of an arc of Sunraw's career where earlier on, say,
Speaker 3: in the forties and fifties, he was a more conventional
Speaker 3: jazz musician. Maybe not totally conventional, I think, always sort
Speaker 3: of you know, more innovative, but he was playing in
Speaker 3: more familiar styles like maybe swing or I read that
Speaker 3: maybe some of his stuff is considered hard bop.
Speaker 2: But yeah, hard bob b boban. I'm gonna have to admit,
Speaker 2: as we discuss Son Raw and his music, I've never
Speaker 2: been like a huge jazz person, so I'm going to
Speaker 2: use some of the wrong terminology to describe jazz inevitably.
Speaker 2: But yeah, he was, this is my understanding as well,
Speaker 2: and more traditional, but then you know, really gets on
Speaker 2: this space trip, you know, certainly by the late sixties,
Speaker 2: early seventies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I was going to say. So in
Speaker 3: the sixties is when the stuff it starts getting very
Speaker 3: strange and going in much more experimental, avant guard directions,
Speaker 3: and by the seventies is incorporating just lots of weirdness.
Speaker 3: Is like famously weird at this point.
Speaker 2: And yeah, so the biographer here writes that, yeah, going
Speaker 2: to one of these concerts could be mystifying and even scary.
Speaker 2: Quote the exotic, the down home, eccentric, hip, archaic and
Speaker 2: even and the freaky could come at the audience in
Speaker 2: overlapping waves. He writes that are performed might begin in
Speaker 2: total darkness, and then the lights would come up on
Speaker 2: acrobats and dancers while the band chanted marched around and
Speaker 2: various costumes you know that might reference both ancient Egypt
Speaker 2: and also a kind of space age future. You'd have
Speaker 2: saxophone players engaging in battles, musical battles. And then quote
Speaker 2: there was also the maestro himself and his cockpit slash
Speaker 2: pullpit playing an electric keyboard, his fingers sliding upside down
Speaker 2: on the keys, sometimes with his butt. All of this
Speaker 2: enacted in front of a silent movie of the band
Speaker 2: capering among the pyramids of Egypt.
Speaker 3: That sounds pretty amazing. I wish I could have seen that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And to be clear, I'll come back to this
Speaker 2: as well. But even though soun Raw has been gone
Speaker 2: from the mortal realm for quite a while, the orchestra
Speaker 2: is still around and still tours, so it is possible
Speaker 2: for folks out there to catch them. More on that
Speaker 2: in a bit, but any rate, so this was the
Speaker 2: basic vibe of the show, and some music fans, critics,
Speaker 2: and commentators loved all of this. Others distrusted it or
Speaker 2: scoffed at it. You know, it wasn't universally loved, but
Speaker 2: a lot of people were into it. But the band
Speaker 2: was doing something very unique. They were creating excitement, generating
Speaker 2: excitement about jazz, drawing in all these different jazz influences
Speaker 2: while also exploring new ground. Son Raw was a pioneer
Speaker 2: in the use of electric music in jazz, and he
Speaker 2: was also of course a founding pioneer in afrofuturism itself.
Speaker 2: So he's bringing in space age concepts, sci fi concepts,
Speaker 2: esoteric concepts alongside Black egyptomania to generate his own personal
Speaker 2: mythology and this unique take on afrofuturist philosophy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and a big part of This comes through in
Speaker 3: the movie. It's one of the main themes of the
Speaker 3: movie is something about a different form that black liberation
Speaker 3: can take, So like black liberation being not just a
Speaker 3: political project in this world, but kind, to some extent
Speaker 3: expansion of consciousness and to some extent maybe a literal
Speaker 3: transportation to a cosmic realm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, this is one of
Speaker 2: those things that I think it's difficult to codify exactly
Speaker 2: what his philosophy was. I would say to really understand it,
Speaker 2: you need to listen to his music and hear him talk,
Speaker 2: and you know, hear the lectures that he gave. My
Speaker 2: perhaps limited understanding of it is that basically the idea
Speaker 2: is that human beings can only achieve a kind of
Speaker 2: freedom and liberation via creative inward journey, with space being
Speaker 2: the source of life and the infinite expanse of inner creativity,
Speaker 2: mythology and personal identity. Earth, on the other hand, is
Speaker 2: a doomed world, and our individual lives are much too
Speaker 2: short and each of us much too powerless to ever
Speaker 2: enact meaningful outward change. But on an individual inward facing level,
Speaker 2: we can all grow ask what he referred to as
Speaker 2: the altered destiny. Yeah, so it does seem to be
Speaker 2: a recurring theme that, like when he's talking about space
Speaker 2: and going into outer space, it's also talking about going
Speaker 2: inward into the creative world.
Speaker 3: Yeah. That is an interesting point of interpretation where I
Speaker 3: want to be careful not to go too far either
Speaker 3: way to either over or underliteralize the extent to which
Speaker 3: he's talking about really traveling into space, because to some
Speaker 3: extent it seems like it's not just a metaphor for
Speaker 3: like expansion of consciousness or transformation of the self into
Speaker 3: a different kind of being. What I detect, you know,
Speaker 3: and caveats for my own understanding, but what I detect
Speaker 3: from the film and the stuff I've read is that
Speaker 3: there is some amount of a metaphor at work there.
Speaker 3: That it is about changing the self and turning inward
Speaker 3: and expanding your own mind through creative expression and the
Speaker 3: finding of inner piece and transformation. But there is also
Speaker 3: some sort of externalization of this into ideas about transportation
Speaker 3: into space and the creation of new types of science
Speaker 3: and technology powered by this creative expression and by music.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely, Again, I think ultimately you have to
Speaker 2: have to let Raw in his music and then this
Speaker 2: film speak speak for itself. Yeah, I have a few
Speaker 2: points here I want to cover from Sweed in that
Speaker 2: biography that concerns specifically this film. He points out that,
Speaker 2: you know, it originally originated as a as an attempt
Speaker 2: to do some sort of a concert film at the
Speaker 2: San Francisco Planetarium. He says that he does stress that
Speaker 2: it would be a mistake to take the film too
Speaker 2: literally as a reflection of Sunraw's ideas, but he does
Speaker 2: point out, you know, Sunraw wrote his own lines, he
Speaker 2: made suggestions during filming, but that it was ultimately collectively
Speaker 2: written and considerably re edited. And he says, quote and
Speaker 2: Son Raw, though he took directions well, kept leaving the
Speaker 2: script behind or ignoring it. So you get the sense
Speaker 2: from from various people involved that this was a film yeah,
Speaker 2: that was kind of shot in in layers and then
Speaker 2: reassembled and then reassembled again, and then there were thoughts
Speaker 2: about you know, cutting stuff out, then the thoughts about
Speaker 2: adding stuff back in. And it was apparently kind of
Speaker 2: a frustration point for the director and the producers because
Speaker 2: one of the things about Raw with his music is
Speaker 2: like no piece was ever really completely finished. To a
Speaker 2: certain extent, like you would always potentially play it again
Speaker 2: and change something about it. You know. He had that
Speaker 2: musician's approach to the content, whereas the filmmakers were like,
Speaker 2: this needs to be done at some point, it has
Speaker 2: to be finished so we can send it out. You know.
Speaker 2: So there was you know, maybe you know, there were
Speaker 2: differing philosophies on the creative process there. Yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 2: Later on, raw Won wanted to cut the film down
Speaker 2: to like sixty three minutes, and some of the cuts
Speaker 2: that he wanted to take out, he wanted to take
Speaker 2: out two sexual situations the pool hall scene that will
Speaker 2: refer to in a bet. And he began to study
Speaker 2: film himself and took to editing the film himself apparently,
Speaker 2: but then increasingly thought, well everything should just be reshot.
Speaker 2: We didn't get it the first time. He wanted to
Speaker 2: be more beautiful, more spiritual, but then later on also
Speaker 2: talked about, well maybe I want to put make sure
Speaker 2: the street stuff, the pool hall scene, all this is
Speaker 2: back in there for one reason or another. So the
Speaker 2: movie here, it showed it. It showed just a couple
Speaker 2: of times in San Francisco and New York when it
Speaker 2: came out in What's seventy four, but then it largely vanished.
Speaker 2: It kind of became not quite a lost film, but
Speaker 2: very much an underground film for a while. And the
Speaker 2: version that we watched the show, and the version that's
Speaker 2: most commonly available out there, the eighty two minute cut,
Speaker 2: this resurface, This came back out in two thousand and three,
Speaker 2: and yeah, that's the version you're going to find in
Speaker 2: most places.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the version I saw. So that's the longer
Speaker 3: version that has all the stuff in it. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: some of the especially some of the earthly present scenes
Speaker 3: where were cut out of Sunraw's initial edit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but then again it sounds like he had a
Speaker 2: shorter edit. But it's not like he was like this
Speaker 2: is my definitive cut, Like he kind of approached it
Speaker 2: like perhaps like something that had not yet found its
Speaker 2: ideal form.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, yeah, that strikes me. The classic artists
Speaker 3: move like you keep changing your mind about what would
Speaker 3: be the best form of something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally understandable. So elevator pitch for this film,
Speaker 2: I came up with a couple of them. The Harrowing
Speaker 2: of Earth by sun Raw there, that's kind of what's
Speaker 2: going on as well as The Day the Earth Stood
Speaker 2: Still jazz version.
Speaker 3: I think both of those work, yeah, because while it
Speaker 3: is a tale of cosmic consciousness and liberation, and it
Speaker 3: is also a tale of doom and salvation.
Speaker 2: All Right, Well, at this point, you're like, I need
Speaker 2: to duck out. I need to watch this film in
Speaker 2: its entirety and then come back or rewatch it, whatever
Speaker 2: the case may be, or just make sure that you
Speaker 2: can watch it later. Well. Space Is the Place is
Speaker 2: currently available to stream in the US on both HBO
Speaker 2: Max and the Criterion Channel. You can also find it
Speaker 2: on DVD and a Blu ray is available via a
Speaker 2: three LP box set from Sundays Music. For my own part,
Speaker 2: I watched it a couple of times for this episode,
Speaker 2: once on HBO Max and then another time on the
Speaker 2: PLEXIFILM DVD, which I rented from Atlanta's own Video Drum.
Speaker 2: It has a couple of extras on there. I mentioned
Speaker 2: that that sometimes sun ron Is Orchestra would play the
Speaker 2: Place sequences of band members in front of ancient Egyptian ruins.
Speaker 2: They include that as bonus content on there. You can
Speaker 2: actually watch that footage, and there's also an interview with
Speaker 2: the producer and the director.
Speaker 3: By the way, if you hear us saying Sunra's orchestra,
Speaker 3: it is spelled like it sounds the way we're saying
Speaker 3: it there, So if you're looking it up, it's a
Speaker 3: r k arch estra. And I believe that some amount
Speaker 3: of allusion to the idea of a biblical arc is
Speaker 3: some is somewhat intentional.
Speaker 2: I think so. Yeah. So Sunra's lingo is full of
Speaker 2: various you know, unique takes on words, combinations of words
Speaker 2: and terms. And as I'll mention again, he was a
Speaker 2: voracious reader, read a lot of like esoteric content, alternative histories,
Speaker 2: and also, especially earlier in his life, a lot of
Speaker 2: like biblical material, so you know, it's very well acquainted
Speaker 2: with with the Bible and interpretations of the Bible. And
Speaker 2: then in his own reading, Yeah, this is this is fascinating.
Speaker 2: Apparently he had, at least later in life, had his
Speaker 2: own take on reading where he believed, or at least
Speaker 2: he told people that the idea was that you had
Speaker 2: all the knowledge that was in books already your head
Speaker 2: and you were just unlocking them by reading books. And
Speaker 2: therefore you could start reading a book at any point
Speaker 2: and stop reading it at any point you're just kind
Speaker 2: of like refreshing your brain with that content. And then
Speaker 2: on top of that, he would tend to read like
Speaker 2: any material as if it were like a careful analysis
Speaker 2: of like biblical writings, and he would often hinge on
Speaker 2: words that sound sounded similar, like orchestra orchestra, you know,
Speaker 2: and combining things and so forth, so that there's a
Speaker 2: lot of that in his in this film and just
Speaker 2: in his language in general.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I believe that there are also some kind of
Speaker 3: Egyptian religious ideas Tupstra I think, you know, raw of course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but even things like altered destiny comes up,
Speaker 2: which of course you get the sense of altered destiny,
Speaker 2: but also an altar as in a like a place
Speaker 2: where some sort of religious ritual takes place and so forth.
Speaker 2: So they were more of that to discuss as we proceed.
Speaker 2: But let's go ahead and get into the people behind
Speaker 2: this film, starting with the director. It is John Coney,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen thirty five through twenty fifteen American director
Speaker 2: who has the sole directorial credit on the film, and
Speaker 2: outside of this film, Outside of Space is the Place,
Speaker 2: he's also credited with directing Pink Floyd Kqed so kqed
Speaker 2: IS was a San Francisco TV station and basically, you know,
Speaker 2: around this time, late sixties, early seventies, I guess they
Speaker 2: had a lot of access to and maybe sent up
Speaker 2: kind of a mandate to film a lot of like
Speaker 2: a lot of bands and a lot of musical acts,
Speaker 2: including Pink Floyd. And so this was what Pink Floyd
Speaker 2: kqed is slash was just a film studio performance with
Speaker 2: I think some added like you know, light show, bells
Speaker 2: and whistles. And of course this ties into the original
Speaker 2: plan for Space is the place that it would be
Speaker 2: some sort of a just a film performance in a
Speaker 2: cool setting, and that of course morphed into this narrative film. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's also stressed that like different people were brought
Speaker 2: in at different times to add elements that would be
Speaker 2: eventually stitched together into this mostly cohesive narrative form that
Speaker 2: includes writer Joshua Smith, who will get to in a moment,
Speaker 2: cinematographer Seth Hill, who was I should note a writer
Speaker 2: and director on in search of with Leonard Nimoy, and
Speaker 2: then all of this gets edited together by editor Barbara Pocras,
Speaker 2: whose credits include Knight of the Cobra Woman, The Giant
Speaker 2: Spider Invasion, Fade to Black Chud two, and the Return
Speaker 2: of a Living Debt.
Speaker 3: Chud to Bud the Chud exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh boy. All right, so we've covered the director.
Speaker 2: The producer on this was Jim Newman born nineteen thirty three.
Speaker 2: This was the first of only three production credits that
Speaker 2: he has from the seventies and eighties. Newman was himself
Speaker 2: a jazz saxophonist and a multi instrumentalist who ultimately became
Speaker 2: involved in a number of artistic interests, from music performance
Speaker 2: to art gallery management. He will also worked with KQED
Speaker 2: TV at the time on programs featuring a variety of musicians,
Speaker 2: and it was roughly out of this work that the
Speaker 2: idea emerged to do this Sunraw project. He went on
Speaker 2: to co found the music festival organization and record label
Speaker 2: Other Minds in I believe nineteen ninety one, and that
Speaker 2: continues on to this day. The festival especially, I think
Speaker 2: the next one is this October.
Speaker 3: Oh cool. Do you know what kind of acts they get?
Speaker 2: I was looking at it. I think it's a lot
Speaker 2: of like jazz and jazz adjacent tie ACKs. But I
Speaker 2: was not super familiar with it, so Bay Area music
Speaker 2: fans and jazz enthusiasts write in and tell us about
Speaker 2: it all right. The writer again, Joshua Smith, is the
Speaker 2: credited writer, alongside Sonraw, who will get to in just
Speaker 2: a second. Smith's only other writing credit was nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: five Super Seal, a kid's movie about a seal that
Speaker 2: is I guess super and its stars. One of the
Speaker 2: stars is Sterling Holloway and it was directed by a
Speaker 2: director by the name of Michael Duggan.
Speaker 3: So this is about a super seal as in a pinniped.
Speaker 3: It's not about a super seal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not like a navy seal, like a straight up
Speaker 2: animal seal. And I think it's sometimes. It was also
Speaker 2: released under the title Captain Nemo. For some reason, I.
Speaker 3: Wasn't even thinking navy seal. I was thinking, like, it
Speaker 3: couldn't be about a gasket.
Speaker 2: It's not a gasket, it's not a soldier. It's just
Speaker 2: a straight up seal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, but hey, we've been putting off. Okay, so
Speaker 3: now we're going to get to the main, the main attraction.
Speaker 3: What is this movie about. It's about Sun Raw.
Speaker 2: That's right, and Sunraw depends This is a difficult Does
Speaker 2: Sunraw play himself? Does he play a fictional version of Sounraw?
Speaker 2: This is I guess this is kind of an opening question.
Speaker 2: It depends on how you want to approach it.
Speaker 3: This was one of my big questions about the movie too,
Speaker 3: and this will come up again when we start talking
Speaker 3: about parts of the plot.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But he also again is credited as writer. He
Speaker 2: at least wrote all of his own lines, and he
Speaker 2: is the composer. All of the music you hear in
Speaker 2: this film is Son Raw.
Speaker 3: And his orchestra.
Speaker 2: So Sounrah lived nineteen fourteen through nineteen ninety three, one
Speaker 2: of the most enigmatic performers of the twentieth century, regardless
Speaker 2: of genre, and a highly influential figure in avant garde jazz.
Speaker 2: As Zwed discusses in his book, Raw gave multiple and
Speaker 2: sometimes contradictory origin stories about himself and his early history
Speaker 2: as a human being, while also denying being born, denying
Speaker 2: being a human, and dismissing any previous names that he
Speaker 2: had as mere pseudonyms. So again, this is not one
Speaker 2: of those cases where he was professionally known as Son Raw.
Speaker 2: It seems to me like he was Son Raw I
Speaker 2: mean that's the name he went by. People called him
Speaker 2: son Raw or Sonny Raw or Sonny or Raw, and
Speaker 2: it was either a persona that he deeply lived or
Speaker 2: indeed simply who he was. Still we know he was
Speaker 2: born Herman Sonny Blount in nineteen fourteen in Birmingham, Alabama,
Speaker 2: and that he quickly proved himself a quite gifted and
Speaker 2: unique individual. He was a voracious reader even at an
Speaker 2: early age, a high achieving student, and something of a
Speaker 2: musical prodigy. From a very early age he was reading
Speaker 2: and composing sheet music, playing in adult bands, apparently coming
Speaker 2: home from gigs with every last song memorized that they played.
Speaker 2: Just had an amazing aptitude for music. He attended Alabama
Speaker 2: Agricultural and Mechanical University, and he was considering further education
Speaker 2: in music, teaching, and even the church, while also just
Speaker 2: reading on a variety of topics, including commentaries and concordances
Speaker 2: for the Bible. And it was during this time, this
Speaker 2: would have been on nineteen thirty six when he was
Speaker 2: I guess around twenty two, he had a visionary or
Speaker 2: paranormal experience, or that those are the terms we would
Speaker 2: use for it today, in which he felt himself experienced
Speaker 2: himself transported in energy form to the planet Saturn by
Speaker 2: other worldly entities that had antennas over their eyes and
Speaker 2: ears that told him to decease teaching training because there
Speaker 2: was going to be quote great trouble in schools and
Speaker 2: that a time of chaos was coming and that he
Speaker 2: would need to speak and the people would listen to him.
Speaker 2: And this vision also included, like it's detailed in the biography,
Speaker 2: like thousands of spaceships landing on Earth beneath a purple
Speaker 2: and dark red sky.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's interesting. I had read about his experience of
Speaker 3: being transported bodily to Saturn, but I hadn't read this
Speaker 3: detail about the spaceships descending on Earth beneath a purple
Speaker 3: and red sky, which maybe I'm taking the implications of
Speaker 3: that wrong with that sounds kind of ominous to me.
Speaker 3: And usually though a lot in the movie Space Is
Speaker 3: The Place is about the future doom of Earth, the
Speaker 3: doom of Earth does not seem to come from external
Speaker 3: cosmic sources. Really. It seems like that, you know, the
Speaker 3: cosmos going outside beyond the Earth is like the good thing,
Speaker 3: that's the salvation and the doom of the Earth is
Speaker 3: somehow intrinsic to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a bit in a Joyful Noise where he's
Speaker 2: giving a a lecture where he's talking about how, like
Speaker 2: all life everything comes from space, like space is the
Speaker 2: source of everything that is vital, but then Earth produces
Speaker 2: nothing but death. And I think his view is that, like,
Speaker 2: it's the people on Earth are out of line with
Speaker 2: the spirit and with their spiritual existence, and it's because
Speaker 2: of these problems on Earth that we are kind of
Speaker 2: like dooming ourselves. But this will be interesting to get
Speaker 2: into when we discuss the plot of the movie as well. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I mentioned earlier that sun Raw would sometimes give
Speaker 2: contradictory ideas about his past human life, but Zwed writes
Speaker 2: that Sunraw, concerning the story of Saturn, quote told this
Speaker 2: story many times, unembarrassed, ingenuously and with remarkable consistency of detail.
Speaker 2: So you know, no matter how he would sort of
Speaker 2: play with other stories, he basically told the same story
Speaker 2: every time with this one. And he points out that
Speaker 2: while in retrospect we might compare this to UFO abduction tales,
Speaker 2: except with the aliens here being friendly, which isn't always
Speaker 2: the case with alien aduction narratives obviously, but more to
Speaker 2: the point, he points out this was many years before
Speaker 2: the UFO abduction script really took off in the early
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties. Now, it is also worth pointing out that
Speaker 2: you can compare this story to various traditions of Christian
Speaker 2: conversion experiences as well, and of course, broadly, you know
Speaker 2: that is always the case. The paranormal experiences that involve UFO,
Speaker 2: those are just you know, very much adjacent to stories
Speaker 2: involving angels or spirits, these various visionary experiences people have
Speaker 2: had throughout time for a variety of reasons. We've talked
Speaker 2: about this on the show on Stuff to Will Your
Speaker 2: Mind multiple times before.
Speaker 3: Have we talked about how a lot of the UFO
Speaker 3: lore is just is coming full circle to spiritual phenomena beliefs?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that well, today, a lot of the people
Speaker 3: who you know, twenty years ago they were really big
Speaker 3: about UFO is like as aliens coming from space. Now
Speaker 3: a lot of them have concluded that actually aliens are
Speaker 3: angels or aliens are demons that like the same phenomena
Speaker 3: they believed in exist, but now they are convinced it
Speaker 3: is spiritual phenomena.
Speaker 2: Oh, Wow, yeah, I mean it, I really have to
Speaker 2: unpack what it says about us today as a civilization.
Speaker 2: But it makes sense because again we're dealing with the
Speaker 2: same meat with different dressing here, I think. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: I'm providing the brief version here concerning son Raw. But
Speaker 2: after this experience, the man who would become Sonny Raw
Speaker 2: and finally Sun Raw began to devote himself to creating
Speaker 2: music with a tightly selected group of spiritually like minded musicians.
Speaker 2: What followed, most notably with the son Raw House in
Speaker 2: Philadelphia was something sometimes described as a house of perpetual rehearsal.
Speaker 3: So just playing music constantly, yeah, just through yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: And you know, if you're like me and you don't
Speaker 2: know a whole lot about jazz, you might you might
Speaker 2: hear orchestra music or see performance footage and think, well,
Speaker 2: this is is just kind of improvising. They're riffing, right,
Speaker 2: But the orchestra music was the result of meticulous rehearsal.
Speaker 2: That's one thing that all these different sources point out
Speaker 2: is that like they were just always rehearsing when they film.
Speaker 2: Space is the place, Like son Raw and his band
Speaker 2: showed up and they were just ready to go. They
Speaker 2: had everything, you know. You know, I don't know to
Speaker 2: what degree there is still playing around and riffing and
Speaker 2: so forth, but you know, it's still a lot of
Speaker 2: work goes into creating what you see on the screen
Speaker 2: and what you hear on these various audio releases.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know to what extent the sun Raw
Speaker 3: Orchestra did involve improvisation. I mean, it looks to me
Speaker 3: like at least some things are maybe some improvised solos,
Speaker 3: maybe some of what Sunra himself is doing at least
Speaker 3: like him when he's spinning around and stuff that it
Speaker 3: seems like that would have to be somewhat improvised. But
Speaker 3: one thing that I think is definitely true is that
Speaker 3: it is hard to improvise effectively if you don't have
Speaker 3: a well rehearsed skeleton to base the improvisation of, you know,
Speaker 3: to have like a tight band that knows when the
Speaker 3: changes are coming, knows how long to vamp, and has
Speaker 3: a strong you know, has strong things going on in
Speaker 3: a structural and rehearsed way. That sort of creates the
Speaker 3: opportunity for a soloist to go on a big you know,
Speaker 3: improvised festooning of those those strong bones underneath. So rehear
Speaker 3: they're not mutually exclusive. Like you know, strong planning and
Speaker 3: rehearsal gives rise to the opportunity for good improvisation.
Speaker 2: That's a great point. That's a great point. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: so you know, you see, you hear people talk about,
Speaker 2: you read about the Sunra House, and you see footage
Speaker 2: of it. And basically this is a place where Sunrat
Speaker 2: had his instruments and his various books were already touched
Speaker 2: on some of the subjects he was into. And he
Speaker 2: lived there along with the current orchestra members, and there
Speaker 2: would also be a revolving assortment of guests as well.
Speaker 2: But you had kind of like a communal living space,
Speaker 2: almost like an asheram, except devoted to the pursuit of music.
Speaker 2: Under Sunra's leadership, he might give you a new name,
Speaker 2: or instruct you. Instruct you too for the first time
Speaker 2: in your life, carve an ancient Egyptian infinity lightning and
Speaker 2: thunder drum out of the stump of a tree that
Speaker 2: had been struck by lightning across the street. That's detailed
Speaker 2: and a joyful noise. And so like my musicians were
Speaker 2: drawn to him like it was a you know, they
Speaker 2: considered like an honor to be able to be there
Speaker 2: and partake of this, to sort of engage in the
Speaker 2: study of the deep cosmic background radiation of jazz wow.
Speaker 2: And so the orchestra toured the US, toured around the world,
Speaker 2: and when sun Raw passed in ninety three, leadership of
Speaker 2: the band at least by ninety five, I believe passed
Speaker 2: to orchestra member Marshall Allen, who is in this film,
Speaker 2: and Marshall and the band continues to tour and as
Speaker 2: of this recording June ninth, twenty twenty six, Marshall Allen
Speaker 2: still leads the band and performs with them at the
Speaker 2: age of one hundred and two. WHOA, yeah, very impressed.
Speaker 3: That's awesome. Yeah, okay, Well, so we know that Sunraw's
Speaker 3: ideas are the core of the film's content. He's sort
Speaker 3: of the star of the film, sort of playing a
Speaker 3: character maybe, but also to a large extent, playing himself
Speaker 3: and representing. But there are also characters in the movie
Speaker 3: that are fully just fictional characters, right, and they might
Speaker 3: sort of represent ideas within Sunraw's philosophy or theology. But
Speaker 3: one of these major characters in the movie is called
Speaker 3: the Overseer sort of a primary villain, a kind of
Speaker 3: Satanic figure in a way, though I don't want to
Speaker 3: overseell that connection because I don't think you can just
Speaker 3: straightforwardly say he is the devil. That's too simple.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's There are shades of Satan to him,
Speaker 2: for sure, But yeah, he is this clearly supernatural manipulator
Speaker 2: type character that is all about the manipulation and in
Speaker 2: the corruption of human beings.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he likes people to meet their bad destiny.
Speaker 3: I've got more detail about that later on, But there's
Speaker 3: sort of different ideas about how sun Raw versus the
Speaker 3: Overseer influence people with respect to destiny, at least as
Speaker 3: far as I could tell from the storytelling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and I should also exploitation is also a
Speaker 2: major theme of this character. So The Overseer is played
Speaker 2: by Raymond Johnson who lived nineteen thirty one through twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one. He's great in this role. He really really
Speaker 2: digs into it, has a nice evil laugh that he
Speaker 2: gets to belt out quite a lot. He previously appeared
Speaker 2: in an uncredited role in seventy one's Dirty Harry, and
Speaker 2: afterwards appeared as Ray Johnson in the seventy six Rudy
Speaker 2: Ray Moore Picture of the Human Tornado. His later credits
Speaker 2: include a nineteen eighty eight TV adaptation of The Bourne Identity,
Speaker 2: so he has a lot of screen time. He's pretty great.
Speaker 2: Another major character, and this is the first human character
Speaker 2: we're going to discuss here, because so far, like sun
Speaker 2: Raw is some sort of cosmic being, and then likewise
Speaker 2: the Overseer is some sort of non human being. But
Speaker 2: then the character Jimmy Fay is just a mortal man
Speaker 2: trying to make his way in the world in early
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies what Oakland, and he is played by Christopher Brooks.
Speaker 2: I couldn't find any dates on him or what his
Speaker 2: age is, but he's an actor whose other credits include
Speaker 2: seventy one's roseland seventy three's Alabama's Ghosts, seventy threes, Magnum Force,
Speaker 2: and seventy threes The God Monster of Indian Flats, as
Speaker 2: well as seventy six. Is almost a man all right.
Speaker 2: A few other characters, a few other actors of note here.
Speaker 2: A number of cast members in this were in nothing else.
Speaker 2: This was, for the most part, I think a scrappy,
Speaker 2: lower budget affair, and so there are various folks that
Speaker 2: just have this as their sole credit. But we have
Speaker 2: a character. This is another one of the mortal characters
Speaker 2: in the show. Character Bubbles is played by Jack Baker,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen forty seven through nineteen ninety four. Mainstream
Speaker 2: American actor throughout the seventies, with appearances on such TV
Speaker 2: shows as Mission Impossible, Good Times, One Bug, and The
Speaker 2: Croft Super Show, as well as such films as seventy
Speaker 2: five's Friday Foster and seventy sevens The Kentucky Fried Movie.
Speaker 2: But by the eighties he pretty much completely transitioned over
Speaker 2: into the adult film industry, outside of a small role
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety one's The Guyver, which we talked about
Speaker 2: the show, a science fiction film.
Speaker 3: That was one of some kind of like powered suit
Speaker 3: or mask.
Speaker 2: Yeah, biotechnology suit with screaming Mad George effects. That's right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: some fun stuff. Mark Hamill is in that one. But
Speaker 2: at any rate, Baker, outside of that film just adult industry.
Speaker 2: After this point. He continued to work in that industry
Speaker 2: for the remainder of his career. Was nominated for awards
Speaker 2: in the adult industry and eventually transitioned into comedic, non
Speaker 2: sexual roles in the adult industry. And this is interesting
Speaker 2: as well because there's at least one more adult actor
Speaker 2: in the film. Johnny Keyes, who lived nineteen forty through
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen, is in this film. I'm not sure who
Speaker 2: he plays. It must be like a small part. I
Speaker 2: don't think he's credited, but he was in the Picture
Speaker 2: Behind the Green Door, pretty famous adult film of the
Speaker 2: of this time period that shot on the same sound
Speaker 2: stage as Space is the Place, oh, you know, using
Speaker 2: some of the some of the same space, so you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know if like one shooting days, one shooting nights,
Speaker 2: that sort of thing, but yeah, these were both coming
Speaker 2: together at the same time. Cool, all right? There There
Speaker 2: are other like secondary antagonists in the film, and they
Speaker 2: are NASA operatives. They are this will NASA assassins.
Speaker 3: One of the weirdest plot elements that I did not
Speaker 3: expect is this movie has absolutely wicked, racist, murderous NASA technicians.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and the main one, the nastiest of them,
Speaker 2: is Agent number one and he is played by Morgan Upton,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen thirty through nineteen ninety one. Upton is
Speaker 2: best known as one of the four Stormtrooper voice actors
Speaker 2: working in nineteen seventy seven Star Wars.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so when you hear the original Star Wars any
Speaker 2: of that Stormtrooper chatter, Morgan Upton is in there somewhere.
Speaker 3: Must be another one of these drills.
Speaker 2: Yeah. His other credits include seventy two's The Candidate, seventy
Speaker 2: seven's Nightmare in Blood, seventy nine's More American Graffiti, eighty
Speaker 2: six is Peggy Sue Got Married, in eighty eight s
Speaker 2: Tucker the Man in His Dream, and then finally I'll
Speaker 2: just mention that we have Son Raw and his orchestra
Speaker 2: in this, so you will see a number of orchestra members.
Speaker 2: The credited members of the orchestra president are John Gilmore,
Speaker 2: Danny Davis, Larry Northington, Kawami Haddi, Ken Moshesh. June Tyson,
Speaker 2: she's the vocalist. You see her multiple times. She's great.
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of Sunrise music, like, she's pretty iconic.
Speaker 2: Can you hear someone singing? Space is the place? It's
Speaker 2: June Tyson.
Speaker 3: She's doing a lot of the doing a lot of
Speaker 3: the chanting.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Marshall Allen, we already mentioned the current member
Speaker 2: of current leader band Leader of the Orchestra, you see
Speaker 2: him in this as well, elo Emoe, Danny Thompson, Lex Humphreys,
Speaker 2: and Tommy Hunter uh and of this group, I think
Speaker 2: Marshall Allen and Danny Davis are the only ones who
Speaker 2: are still part of the band. You know, several have
Speaker 2: passed on since this film was made, but again, the
Speaker 2: Orchestra is still out there touring by all means, go
Speaker 2: out and see them and listeners. If you have seen
Speaker 2: the Orchestra perform live at any point during its existence,
Speaker 2: write in and tell us about it.
Speaker 3: Have you been a member of the orchestra at any point?
Speaker 2: That would be impressive as well.
Speaker 3: Would please please write in Contact that stuff to blow
Speaker 3: your mind dot com. Okay, are you ready to talk
Speaker 3: about the plot to some extent at least?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I'm not going to do a chronological scene by scene
Speaker 3: narration of this movie, as we've said before. I think
Speaker 3: that works better for some of the like sillier like
Speaker 3: B movies we do. Instead here, I think we should
Speaker 3: talk about the opening couple of sequences in detail, because
Speaker 3: they established some of the themes and structure of the rest,
Speaker 3: and then we can move on to some general comments
Speaker 3: and observations.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh, and by the way, inserting this from later because
Speaker 3: I forgot to say it earlier. If you're not familiar
Speaker 3: with our show, we usually we will discuss like through
Speaker 3: the whole plot of the movie and including ending details.
Speaker 3: So if you want to have things not spoiled and
Speaker 3: see the movie, you know, going in fresh, you should
Speaker 3: stop here and go check it out. The movie opens
Speaker 3: in space, appropriately with stars hanging in the darkness.
Speaker 2: Most of the films we talk about started, it's.
Speaker 3: A very common opening. Yeah, so stars in space and
Speaker 3: these steady pulses of organ music, just a chord on
Speaker 3: the organ pulsing and then swelling and then fading, and
Speaker 3: then a spaceship enters the scene, gliding through the middle
Speaker 3: distance of the shot. This is the sun Raw Spaceship, Rob.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you found is there a name
Speaker 3: they give to this ship. If they mentioned it in
Speaker 3: the movie, it went past me.
Speaker 2: I don't think they refer to it as is anything
Speaker 2: other than sun Raw Spaceship. I often think of it
Speaker 2: as the arc, yeah, because it's kind of an arc,
Speaker 2: and you know, we think of the orchestra. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I think it's just the spaceship.
Speaker 3: It is sort of a yellow gold color of fire,
Speaker 3: shaped a bit like a dumbbell, with two spheres connected
Speaker 3: by a tube in the middle, but the two spheres
Speaker 3: on each side of the handle if it's a dumbbell,
Speaker 3: have tails that make themach look kind of like a tadpole.
Speaker 3: And then on the front of the two spheres there
Speaker 3: are these concentric circular designs that look like rings of
Speaker 3: green and orange flames surrounding central dots, which you could
Speaker 3: think of as the pupils of eyes or the nipples
Speaker 3: of breasts. So the spaceship is a very interesting image,
Speaker 3: and like how many different other images it suggests all
Speaker 3: at the same time. Clearly there is something of the
Speaker 3: sun and solar deities about it, light and fire, there's
Speaker 3: something of gold about it, organic imagery like breasts or eyes,
Speaker 3: and also gamat cells to some extent ancient Egyptian religious
Speaker 3: motifs are suggested by it, and I think not just
Speaker 3: by proximity to the costumes. There's something about like the
Speaker 3: concentric circles around the front that looks kind of Egyptian.
Speaker 3: There's also the concept of balance, with the two lobes
Speaker 3: balanced on a central bar. But also there are some
Speaker 3: elements of more conventional science fiction spaceships, because later we're
Speaker 3: going to see the ship flying through the air shooting
Speaker 3: basically laser beams out of the eyes, though not as
Speaker 3: a weapon in any scene that I recall. I believe
Speaker 3: it's more for I don't know what. What do you
Speaker 3: think the beams are for?
Speaker 2: Oh, and it's a great question like is it scanning?
Speaker 2: Is it judging? We have this detail, we'll get to
Speaker 2: where we have the card of judgment. The Tarot Card
Speaker 2: of Judgment is held aloft by sun Raw and it
Speaker 2: shows the spaceship on there. I don't know that that
Speaker 2: gets into a question of like the doom that is
Speaker 2: coming to Earth, the death sentence that is on Earth.
Speaker 2: Is it like self generated or is there some degree
Speaker 2: of judgment that is taking place because sun Ra and
Speaker 2: his spaceship have come to Earth.
Speaker 3: It could be transmolecularization, yes, yes, it could very well be. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So we see the spaceship, it's like gliding through space
Speaker 3: and the voices voices start on the soundtrack. They ring
Speaker 3: out in this reverberating call in response, and what they're
Speaker 3: saying is it's after the end of the world. World,
Speaker 3: don't you know that yet? And this goes on repeating
Speaker 3: for some time, and then we start to hear the
Speaker 3: instruments of the orchestra come in, playing this free jazz
Speaker 3: crescendo with chaotic drums and the kind of scrambling high
Speaker 3: pitched trumpet. So if you've heard free jazz before, sometimes
Speaker 3: you'll hear a motif like this, like a horned instrument
Speaker 3: just playing this fast, skittering, very high pitched solo that
Speaker 3: it feels like it's just frantic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really love the music in this opening sequence.
Speaker 2: It feels like fittingly cosmic and dark and mysterious. Will
Speaker 2: One sort of side question here is like, some of
Speaker 2: you out there are very well acquainted with Sun Raw
Speaker 2: and his orchestra, and perhaps already have your favorite albums.
Speaker 2: Some of you might wonder, like, well, what's a good
Speaker 2: place to start with Sun Raw? It's easier now than
Speaker 2: ever before to go out and sample our new artists
Speaker 2: that you're interested in, or artists that are new to you.
Speaker 2: I ask a friend, my friend David Streepy, who's been
Speaker 2: on the show before, what his advice is because he's
Speaker 2: learned he's listened to a lot more son Raw than
Speaker 2: I have, and one that he suggested to me that
Speaker 2: I will pass on to listeners is Astro Black. You
Speaker 2: can find that one. It's like four or five tracks.
Speaker 2: You can find it wherever you stream your music, and
Speaker 2: it a lot of the music on that release has
Speaker 2: this kind of vibe to it, which I really appreciate.
Speaker 3: If I can also recommend one of his albums, I
Speaker 3: was not super familiar with Sunro's music before. I think
Speaker 3: I heard a little bit before, but none enough to
Speaker 3: have any real knowledge or expertise about it. But I
Speaker 3: started listening to some things before recording this episode, and
Speaker 3: if I can recommend one of his earlier ones, it's
Speaker 3: a little bit weird, but it has not gotten super
Speaker 3: weird yet. It's called Interstellar Low Ways. I think it's
Speaker 3: from the year nineteen sixty. I really enjoyed that one. Awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's good to have a place to
Speaker 2: start because he put out so much music, and I'm
Speaker 2: to understand there's a lot of music that he recorded
Speaker 2: that has never been released, like this was his this
Speaker 2: was his his compulsion, his passion, and yeah, so there's
Speaker 2: just a lot of music out there. And again he
Speaker 2: moved in different jazz waters. So I guess if you're
Speaker 2: into jazz at all, or you think you might be,
Speaker 2: there's a good chance something son raw recorded at some
Speaker 2: point is going to connect with you.
Speaker 3: Anyway. Coming back to this opening shot, I really like
Speaker 3: how there are dynamics, you might say, almost like musical
Speaker 3: dynamics at play in this opening. So the main thing
Speaker 3: I was thinking about is there's a warm cool dynamic,
Speaker 3: Like you get the warm musical tones of the organ
Speaker 3: when the organ is pulsing at the beginning, and you
Speaker 3: get the warm orange gold color of the spaceship, and
Speaker 3: then against that you have the cool or cold sounds
Speaker 3: created by like the reverb effect on the voices when
Speaker 3: the chant is going on, and the high pitched brass
Speaker 3: that feels like a cold sound, and then also the
Speaker 3: cold imagery of deep space. And I don't know, it
Speaker 3: feels like textually intentional to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So after this opening, we pan over an illustrated image
Speaker 3: of an otherworldly garden with diverse trees and flowers blooming
Speaker 3: on the side of a hill while some credits play,
Speaker 3: And then finally, while these strange jazz sounds are still playing,
Speaker 3: we come up on a live action shot in a
Speaker 3: forest with two figures in view, just two figures at first,
Speaker 3: we'll see more later. One figure is sun Raw himself,
Speaker 3: wearing his elaborate Egyptian garments with lots of gold, a
Speaker 3: feronic headdress complete with this great urb and nestled in
Speaker 3: a U shaped fork rising off the middle of his crown.
Speaker 3: I think this is imagery of the solar disk pointing
Speaker 3: to Auta or Raw. And then there's another figure alongside
Speaker 3: sun Raw here, which is a figure closed entirely in
Speaker 3: black robes with a black hood, so it's face its
Speaker 3: face would be the only thing visible, but the face
Speaker 3: is not visible because it is hidden behind a mask,
Speaker 3: and the mask is just a mirror, so no face,
Speaker 3: just a flat oval mirror.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's never really explained who these mirror faced
Speaker 2: entities are. I don't know, there acolytes of Sunrise and
Speaker 2: the cosmic Realm or something, but I have read that
Speaker 2: at some point in production this was supposed to be
Speaker 2: the Overseer, but then they ended up going in a
Speaker 2: different direction with how the Overseer would be represented in
Speaker 2: the film. But I love the mystery of it here
Speaker 2: and God, this whole opening sequence to spaces. The place
Speaker 2: is one of the most mesmerizing things I could think
Speaker 2: you could see. It's like the first like three and
Speaker 2: a half minutes essentially the film. I mean, I defy
Speaker 2: anyone to lose interest in the movie while watching this.
Speaker 2: It just really sucks you in. It's so surreal, another
Speaker 2: world lay out.
Speaker 3: It's wonderful, It's totally cool and so sunraw. He's walking
Speaker 3: here in this garden. He raises up his hand, and
Speaker 3: in his hand there is an object which he kind
Speaker 3: of releases into the air. I think it is supposed
Speaker 3: to be some kind of alien organism, but maybe it
Speaker 3: could be a kind of biotechnology. It looks like a
Speaker 3: cross between a jellyfish and a closed flower. So like
Speaker 3: a closed flower has a long green stem terminating at
Speaker 3: the top in this colorful pink and purple bulb, But
Speaker 3: then above the bulb there is a transparent dome like
Speaker 3: the bell of a jellyfish, and the stem structure kind
Speaker 3: of tapers off below the body and becomes flexible, like
Speaker 3: the trailing tentacles of a jellyfish. So it's this jellyfish flower.
Speaker 3: The jellyfish flower being floats away and then seems to
Speaker 3: travel beside Sunraw and his mirror faced companion hovering in
Speaker 3: the air, I think, maybe leading them through the four
Speaker 3: or maybe doing their bidding in the forest, and they
Speaker 3: wander through the trees, seeing plants, some plants that look
Speaker 3: like familiar earth plants, but also seeing alien flowers, some
Speaker 3: of which look like horns, like trumpets or trombones, and
Speaker 3: then also seeing alien fruits that kind of look like
Speaker 3: huge pink dragon fruits. And by the way, the music
Speaker 3: is still going, so the free form music of the
Speaker 3: orchestra is still playing in the background here. And then suddenly,
Speaker 3: underneath one of these pink fruits, we see a group
Speaker 3: of flowers or other fruits shaped like human hands growing
Speaker 3: from stems which are reaching up from below like they
Speaker 3: are either praising the fruit or maybe ready to catch
Speaker 3: the fruit when it falls. And then Sunraw sends his
Speaker 3: jellyfish flower ahead of him into a clearing, and then
Speaker 3: he stops wandering, and the camera focuses on him while
Speaker 3: he seems to be contemplating something. First, he starts to
Speaker 3: hum a tune, and you could think for a second, oh,
Speaker 3: he's humming a tune. He's just bored or passing the time.
Speaker 3: But then you realize he is assessing something about this place.
Speaker 3: He is judging its qualities in how it receives the tune.
Speaker 3: He hums, and he starts to speak. He says, the
Speaker 3: music is different here, the vibrations are different, not like
Speaker 3: Planet Earth. Planet Earth is the sound of guns, anger, frustration.
Speaker 3: And now we see Sunraw is facing the figure in
Speaker 3: the mirror mask and the hooded robes as if he
Speaker 3: is speaking to that figure. But if the face of
Speaker 3: a mirror is he speaking to himself? I don't know.
Speaker 3: Also in the background here we can see other people
Speaker 3: we haven't seen before. So there's a man standing aside
Speaker 3: wearing a headdress representing the Egyptian falcon headed god Horus,
Speaker 3: and he's back there. So we're getting more of a
Speaker 3: flavor of Sunraw's group people traveling with him, and their
Speaker 3: Egyptian cosmology reflected forms and shapes. Sunraw goes on talking.
Speaker 3: He says, there was no one to talk to on
Speaker 3: planet Earth who would understand. We set up a colony
Speaker 3: for black people here. See what they can do on
Speaker 3: a planet of their own without any white people there.
Speaker 3: They could drink in the beauty of this planet. It
Speaker 3: would affect their vibrations for the better, of course, another
Speaker 3: place in the universe, up under different stars, that would
Speaker 3: be where the altered destiny would come in. And during
Speaker 3: this monologue, the camera pulls back and we see that
Speaker 3: Sun Raw is not standing anymore. He's sitting on a
Speaker 3: rock in the middle of this forest clearing. And I
Speaker 3: want to note here we sort of alluded to this earlier,
Speaker 3: but I think this is a good place to talk
Speaker 3: about because we're hearing his monologue at this part in
Speaker 3: the movie that Sunraw does not project much emotion about
Speaker 3: this as he talked, though you can understand, like the
Speaker 3: things he says are very full of feeling, They express
Speaker 3: feelings about things. They're full of emotional verdicts and judgments
Speaker 3: about things, So you can understand his feelings about the
Speaker 3: subject matter from the words he says. But his physical
Speaker 3: bodily performance throughout the movie is almost studiously calm, quiet, flat,
Speaker 3: and unemotional. He has this air that is at once
Speaker 3: mystical and intellectual, but never animated, and never showing much
Speaker 3: emotion in his face, his body, or his tone of speaking.
Speaker 3: And I assumed at first that this was a deliberate
Speaker 3: choice made for the movie, maybe for the kind of
Speaker 3: the character version of himself that he's playing.
Speaker 2: But I don't know.
Speaker 3: Looking at some interviews and Rob, I think you said
Speaker 3: this that it seems he often presented himself that way
Speaker 3: in interviews as well, even outside the context of the film.
Speaker 3: So maybe it's just that's the way that he was
Speaker 3: or the way that he often presented himself in public.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think that's likely the case. I
Speaker 2: would add another thing about the way he delivers these
Speaker 2: these monologues is that he's there's not a clear sense
Speaker 2: of affectation in his voice, like he is not trying
Speaker 2: to speak like a space Buddha or something, or like
Speaker 2: he sounds like against sounds very wise, knowledgeable, very charismatic,
Speaker 2: but also sounds very much like a guy who was
Speaker 2: born in Birmingham and lives in Philadelphia. You know, So
Speaker 2: there's a he's very relatable in that sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he's not. Again, it doesn't feel like he's
Speaker 3: putting on a character. I think that's why. You know,
Speaker 3: we were talking earlier about this sense that lines in
Speaker 3: the movie feel like they could be improvised from him.
Speaker 3: Of course they weren't improvised. He wrote them ahead of time,
Speaker 3: but I think what we're really tapping in there, tapping
Speaker 3: into there is not improvised as in made up on
Speaker 3: the spot, but improvised as in just flowing naturally from
Speaker 3: his real way of speaking, you know, not like lines
Speaker 3: written for another character. But anyway, So in this scene
Speaker 3: sun Ross start he sort of establishes the themes of
Speaker 3: the movie, the philosophical and spiritual themes of the movie.
Speaker 3: So one of the premises is that he wants to
Speaker 3: set up a colony in space, a colony on this
Speaker 3: beautiful other planet that can be a place for black people.
Speaker 3: He also talks about the premise that the Earth is doomed.
Speaker 3: In fact, it's so doomed that it's already after the
Speaker 3: end of the world. Like we heard in the chant
Speaker 3: at the beginning, there's a kind of there's a fatalism
Speaker 3: about that. It's not just like doom is coming or
Speaker 3: maybe coming, it's already happened in a sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think in that like this seems to
Speaker 2: tie into this idea like post colonial contact being a
Speaker 2: kind of like a post apocalyptic existence some senses. But
Speaker 2: at the same time, Sunrise very much will get into
Speaker 2: the way that he treats time there is the sense
Speaker 2: too that like it's after the end of the world,
Speaker 2: perhaps after time has since has has ceased to make
Speaker 2: any difference to us.
Speaker 3: Well, let's get to that. So he explains. He talks
Speaker 3: about how, in his view, the Earth in its present
Speaker 3: state is not a good place for black people. So
Speaker 3: he's going to set up a colony for black people
Speaker 3: on this beautiful garden planet and they can live out
Speaker 3: what he calls the altered Destiny. And that's again this
Speaker 3: theme that comes up many times in the movie. He
Speaker 3: starts to explain how people from Earth could be physically
Speaker 3: and spiritually transported to this new planet. He says, equation wise,
Speaker 3: the first thing to do is to consider time as
Speaker 3: officially ended. We work on the other side of time.
Speaker 3: It sort of suggests to me that time hasn't ended
Speaker 3: in the sense of the end of life. We think
Speaker 3: of the end of time as like the destruction of all,
Speaker 3: but that time has ended in some other since allowing
Speaker 3: the type of life idealized by Sun raw to go
Speaker 3: on without it. That there can be life without time
Speaker 3: on the other side of time.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, after this, he gets to a very important point again,
Speaker 3: like a core theme of the movie, which is the
Speaker 3: method of transportation. How are we going to get the
Speaker 3: people here to the planet, He says, we bring them
Speaker 3: here either through isotope teleportation, trans molecularization, or better still,
Speaker 3: teleport the whole planet here through music. And then we
Speaker 3: get the title on screen, space is the place as
Speaker 3: we see a human body. I think it might be sunrass,
Speaker 3: somebody's floating in space in the gold chain mail head
Speaker 3: dress with blue satin robes wrapped all around, or sometimes
Speaker 3: extended like wings like the wings of an angel, or
Speaker 3: maybe a bird like Egyptian god. But yeah, So the
Speaker 3: final thought here is this key theme of the movie
Speaker 3: that music can be a kind of spiritual and I think,
Speaker 3: in some sense literal transportation technology which has powers to
Speaker 3: take people body and soul through the cosmos to a
Speaker 3: different place, to a better planet which is not dominated
Speaker 3: and despoiled by the evil powers that rule this world.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, And other interviews I've hear him
Speaker 2: talk about music as indeed a universal spiritual language.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So again, just an amazing intro to this film. First
Speaker 2: what almost three and a half minutes, just absolutely mesmerizing,
Speaker 2: sucks you in, and then we transport in time and
Speaker 2: place to Chicago nineteen forty three.
Speaker 3: That's a strange transition. Yeah, you get a cipia toned
Speaker 3: still shot outside of a bar with an old timey car.
Speaker 3: There it says Chicago nineteen forty three. So yeah, we
Speaker 3: cut to this bar, and this is where we're going
Speaker 3: to meet some other major characters that appear throughout the film.
Speaker 3: So inside the bar is full of cigar smoke and
Speaker 3: hot piano music. We're hearing some bop, I guess or
Speaker 3: some swing and there are tables with red tablecloths, folks
Speaker 3: all dressed up for a nice night out on the town.
Speaker 3: We see young military servicemen in their uniforms. We see
Speaker 3: men and women in fancy dresses and tuxedos. And the
Speaker 3: entertainment here at the club is music and dance. So
Speaker 3: there's a group of sort of burlesque or cabaret dancers.
Speaker 3: And then on the piano is Sonny Ray, a sort
Speaker 3: of past earthly alter ego of Sun Raw. Not wearing
Speaker 3: his usual cosmic Egyptian clothing. Here he's dressed in a
Speaker 3: jacket with a very cool black and white chevron pattern.
Speaker 3: I like that jacket, but underneath he's got this black
Speaker 3: shirt with a cool necklace on and sunglasses and a
Speaker 3: knit cap. He's playing the piano and he is cooking.
Speaker 3: It's not the avant garde style of music. It's not
Speaker 3: that like climbing the mountains of Mars music we heard earlier.
Speaker 3: This is conventional, fast moving jazz piano. And I assume
Speaker 3: that this scene is somewhat a nod to Sunraw's own
Speaker 3: history of his own you know, like his own past
Speaker 3: playing more conventional jazz music and as a more conventional
Speaker 3: jazz band leader before his style started getting really weird
Speaker 3: and different in the sixties.
Speaker 2: I want to note this is one of those scenes
Speaker 2: where if you go back and rewatch the film, you
Speaker 2: begin to notice that various other characters from the movie
Speaker 2: Yes are present here, like the the two evil NASA guys.
Speaker 2: They're here for some reason, totally unacknowledged. The big guy
Speaker 2: Tiny from later in the film, he's here for some reason.
Speaker 2: So it is the past, and we have a past
Speaker 2: version of Sun Raw, but also there may be other
Speaker 2: mortal characters who are just here in a different incarnation.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I don't know what that means. I don't know. Well,
Speaker 3: one thing I wonder is about where this scene originally
Speaker 3: came in the ordering of the film.
Speaker 2: Right right, yeah, again, it speaks to the way this
Speaker 2: film was kind of like found and it's edit.
Speaker 3: But anyway, in this scene we also meet one of
Speaker 3: the main villains of the movie, named the Overseer, who
Speaker 3: on one hand is represented as a wealthy and powerful
Speaker 3: pimp with expensive clothes and superficial charm though he can
Speaker 3: he's charming and suave, but he can also be quite
Speaker 3: vicious and cruel in some later scenes, and we're introduced
Speaker 3: to him through dialogue between a couple of waitresses at
Speaker 3: the bar. One explains to the other saying, that's the Overseer.
Speaker 3: He sees something he wants, he gets it. He'll be
Speaker 3: getting around to you soon. And that hints at the
Speaker 3: fact that often the something that he wants is not
Speaker 3: a thing, but a person, maybe even a person's soul,
Speaker 3: because on the other hand, so that's what he is.
Speaker 3: On one hand, he is a terrestrial kind of character,
Speaker 3: this rich pimp, But on the other hand, the Overseer
Speaker 3: is depicted as a figure of cosmic and spiritual evil
Speaker 3: with godlike powers. He is shown as a tempter and
Speaker 3: as a machiavellian manipulator, controlling and coercing people, coercing people's lives. So,
Speaker 3: in many ways, as we said earlier, a figure likes Satan,
Speaker 3: but I think also importantly different from Satan in some ways,
Speaker 3: I see a big part of his role as being
Speaker 3: an enforcer of fate or destiny. Did you also see
Speaker 3: this theme that like many of the human characters in
Speaker 3: the film are kind of on a set of rails.
Speaker 3: They are on this predetermined path of destiny where they
Speaker 3: are headed for confusion, unfreedom, and doom, and the overseer
Speaker 3: wants them to stay on those rails and keep them
Speaker 3: headed for this bad place, the place of bafflement and powerlessness.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, even as those characters at times like acknowledge
Speaker 2: like why am I on this path? Why am I
Speaker 2: doing this?
Speaker 3: Yeah? By contrast, Son Raw in his various forms, will
Speaker 3: appear to people and offer them another path, an altered destiny,
Speaker 3: in which they can expand their consciousness, liberate themselves in
Speaker 3: some important way, and wake up to the knowledge that
Speaker 3: there is a place for them in something great and
Speaker 3: wondrous if they will take it, a place in space.
Speaker 3: And it brings us back to this main metaphor here.
Speaker 3: But in this scene in the Bar Chicago, the overseer
Speaker 3: he arrives at the bar with a couple of women.
Speaker 3: There's like a woman on each of his arms. He's
Speaker 3: in sunglasses indoors, and he's got a pink flower on
Speaker 3: his lapel. His party is seated at a table near
Speaker 3: the front row, and he buys a cigar. He talks
Speaker 3: to the matre d and comments on the piano player,
Speaker 3: which again this is son Raw is Sonny Ray, And
Speaker 3: of course you know the matre d is very proud
Speaker 3: of their music there. You know, this is one of
Speaker 3: the best piano players he's ever heard. But the overseer says, no,
Speaker 3: I hate him. I want him off the stage. So
Speaker 3: he instantly recognizes that's his enemy. And the matre d
Speaker 3: goes up on stage and I don't know if he's
Speaker 3: the matre d he took. He's some kind of a
Speaker 3: central figure announcer. He goes up and takes the microphone
Speaker 3: and tries to move things along from the piano segment
Speaker 3: into the next act. So he announces, you know, the
Speaker 3: cabaret dancers are going to come out and perform. But
Speaker 3: here things get kind of funny. Sonny Ray is supposed
Speaker 3: to play the dancers on, but he refusing to shift
Speaker 3: into the dance music and is just vamping on the
Speaker 3: piano from the end of the song he was playing,
Speaker 3: and the vamping just gets weirder and weirder musically, and
Speaker 3: eventually he and people are getting very annoyed with him
Speaker 3: because of this. Eventually he does start picking up the
Speaker 3: tempo and the dancers start to come out, but while
Speaker 3: it sounds like the rhythm is right for the dancers
Speaker 3: to start, he's also playing all of these bizarre dissonant
Speaker 3: chords and scales on top of it, and it seems like,
Speaker 3: I don't know if you interpreted it the same way
Speaker 3: that I did, but it's like the weirdness of the
Speaker 3: music unleashes a kind of elemental force on the bar,
Speaker 3: and it's like the weirdness is a power of itself,
Speaker 3: and it starts blowing like wind starts blowing and kicking
Speaker 3: up clouds of dust and glass breaks everywhere, and people
Speaker 3: start screaming and running for the exits. And then the
Speaker 3: sounds of the real son Raw Orchestra come in on
Speaker 3: the soundtrack So Gone, or the sounds of the nineteen
Speaker 3: forty swing. Now we're hearing these high pitch scrambling horns
Speaker 3: and the avant garde space music.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a mighty wind is summoned by this. It's almost
Speaker 2: like this whole club was in an airlock, and now
Speaker 2: the air lock has been breached.
Speaker 3: Yes, So people are streaming down the staircases, tripping over
Speaker 3: each other to get out. There's a mirror ball hanging
Speaker 3: from the ceiling that falls down and crashes to the floor.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that has any significance.
Speaker 2: There's one of the burlesque dancers has a pasty blown
Speaker 2: right off the nipple.
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of humor in this sequence.
Speaker 3: So yeah, smoke, wind, flashes of colored lights, beings that
Speaker 3: seem like maybe they could be aliens appear briefly in silhouette,
Speaker 3: and the smoke, and eventually the piano itself rolls away
Speaker 3: from under Sunny Ray's hands, leaving Sunny Ras and the
Speaker 3: overseer sitting across from each other alone in silence. So
Speaker 3: I think by refusing to just play the dance music
Speaker 3: and insisting on his own strange and unpredictable musical explorations,
Speaker 3: Sonny Ray has somehow unleashed a storm of literal physical
Speaker 3: energy and transformation, and people are frightened and they run
Speaker 3: from the music, but it is altering reality all around them.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I was reading too much into that,
Speaker 3: but it feels significant about what it's supposed to mean
Speaker 3: for sun Ra's life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yea, and I think that that seems fair. That
Speaker 2: lines up with with my viewing of the of the scene.
Speaker 2: But now we have just the sun son Raw and
Speaker 2: the overseer just contemplating each other, and this is where
Speaker 2: we're going to eventually get to a game of cards.
Speaker 3: That's right. So they're left alone, and the overseer says,
Speaker 3: you think you're ready for me? And Sonny Ray says,
Speaker 3: are you ready to alter your desk? That's a good reversal.
Speaker 3: The overseer explains that they're going to play a card game,
Speaker 3: and he starts listing games that his opponent can choose from.
Speaker 3: He's like, you want to play seven up whist and
Speaker 3: son Raw holds up a deck of cards and says,
Speaker 3: I say the end of the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's a Tarot deck.
Speaker 3: Okay, I didn't catch that at first, but yeah, it
Speaker 3: does have taro like imagery when we start seeing the
Speaker 3: cards and then they are suddenly teleported. They teleport out
Speaker 3: of the club to the middle of a vast desert plane,
Speaker 3: where Sun Raw now I think appearing. Would you say,
Speaker 3: at the moment of the teleportation, he's no longer Sunny Ray.
Speaker 3: He is now as his transcended self. Yeah, he is
Speaker 3: son Raw here, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Fully for sure.
Speaker 3: So now he is son Raw wearing his gold chain
Speaker 3: mesh head dress, and he's sitting across from the overseer
Speaker 3: at a red velvet topped game table with gold fringe
Speaker 3: and this diamond shaped hole in the middle of the table.
Speaker 3: Once again, the overseer asks Sun Raw to name the game,
Speaker 3: but he specifies that he will cut the deck, and
Speaker 3: this happens a few more times in the movie. The
Speaker 3: overseer always wants to cut the deck, which I think
Speaker 3: is supposed to imply he's cheating. Some of that means, Okay,
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: A lot about cards, but I would assume the see
Speaker 4: I cheats the cards. Yes, yes, So the overseer draws
Speaker 4: a couple of cards from this tarot like deck. First,
Speaker 4: he draws the World, showing a picture of the planet Earth.
Speaker 4: So to me, that signifies the connection of this planet
Speaker 4: with the overseer.
Speaker 3: The evil deity. It seems to go with Sunra's philosophy.
Speaker 3: And then also he draws a card labeled the Chariot
Speaker 3: and it shows a big nineteen seventies luxury sedan. And
Speaker 3: then he throws the cards into the diamond pit. And
Speaker 3: now it's sun Ra's turned to draw. He reaches into
Speaker 3: the deck, he draws a card and reveals it has
Speaker 3: a picture of his spaceship, the one with the two
Speaker 3: golden lobes and the flaming like eyes. And that card
Speaker 3: is labeled Judgment. It's pretty brutal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's that's what does make me wonder. It's like,
Speaker 2: to what extent is son Raw here to judge? To
Speaker 2: what extent are the laser beams from his spaceship like
Speaker 2: beams of judgment and so forth.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't think it is to the extent
Speaker 3: of the day the Earth stood still when it's actually like,
Speaker 3: you know, there is a weapon, but there is at
Speaker 3: least a sense of moral or spiritual judgment. I don't
Speaker 3: know if that extends to actual like punishment.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've thought about this a bit, and I think
Speaker 2: I think it's pretty clear that the coming cataclysm is
Speaker 2: brought on by humanity. You know, it is because we
Speaker 2: are out of tune with ourselves, and we're out of
Speaker 2: tune with the music, and we don't have true music
Speaker 2: in our hearts.
Speaker 3: It is for those who do not accept the altered destiny. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so a lot of the rest of the movie is
Speaker 3: going to consist of scenes with other characters intercut back
Speaker 3: and forth with this game of cards played in the desert.
Speaker 3: So the game seems to be fought over the fates
Speaker 3: of the people of Earth. Did you take it the
Speaker 3: same way?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, But basically I would say every time something bad happens,
Speaker 3: like every time the humans live in confusion and move
Speaker 3: toward the doom destiny, the overseer counts a hand as
Speaker 3: his he like notches one for himself. And every time
Speaker 3: something weird or good happens and the people wake up
Speaker 3: to self liberation and space consciousness, Sunraw wins a hand,
Speaker 3: but Sun Raw he falls behind. He wins fewer hands
Speaker 3: than the overseer until the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, that's generally how you wanted to go
Speaker 2: in any kind of card game or a sporting event
Speaker 2: that takes place in a movie, you know, the person
Speaker 2: you're rooting for, and he's slowly come up from behind.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But before we go to any of these other scenes,
Speaker 3: we cut to some concert footage, the son Raw Orchestra concert.
Speaker 3: So it is we come in in the middle of
Speaker 3: this awesome percussion frenzy where we first see the percussionists playing,
Speaker 3: you know, like the people who have hand drums playing
Speaker 3: the hand drums. But then we pull back and I
Speaker 3: love this. We see and hear that everybody is playing
Speaker 3: some kind of percussion, so like the woodwind section of
Speaker 3: the orchestra, they have their woodwind instruments set aside, and
Speaker 3: they're drumming on bells and I think even on their
Speaker 3: music stands. And then finally the saxophones and the horns
Speaker 3: come in and the energy of the band is crazy.
Speaker 3: And so while the music keeps playing, we cut away
Speaker 3: to the interior set of the spaceship, which is this
Speaker 3: odd glowing amber space with walls that look like they
Speaker 3: are made of polished wood but also have that water
Speaker 3: dissolved Swiss cheese texture of karst you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: kind of karst rock. And then there is a clear
Speaker 3: glass door that you used to enter. I think this
Speaker 3: is the cockpit of the spaceship. This is where you
Speaker 3: pilot it. The clear glass door that opens by rotating
Speaker 3: and it lets one person through the door of the
Speaker 3: space ship at a time. Sunraw enters first, and he's
Speaker 3: going to go sit down at the pilot console on
Speaker 3: the ship. And what's there? Is it going to be
Speaker 3: a steering wheel? No, because what powers the ship? It's music.
Speaker 3: So he sits down to pilot the ship and it
Speaker 3: is a keyboard. This is the method of space travel
Speaker 3: technology powered by music.
Speaker 2: That's right, synth powered space travel, just like in Prometheus.
Speaker 2: By the way, wait what I don't know the engineers
Speaker 2: there in like little flutes and music and stuff.
Speaker 3: They power it with music. I forgot about that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but yeah. So this goes on and then we see
Speaker 3: the space ship approaches the Earth. It comes toward the
Speaker 3: planet Earth, and then it comes down into our atmosphere
Speaker 3: and it flies over some cities. We see it flying
Speaker 3: over the mountainuntains in the neighborhoods. And this is the
Speaker 3: part where it's shooting like red laser beams out of
Speaker 3: the things that look like eyes or nipples. I don't
Speaker 3: know what that's it, because again I don't think we
Speaker 3: see the lasers hurting anybody, so I don't think they're.
Speaker 2: Part of the guidance system or something. Yeah, it looks
Speaker 2: very good too, I have to say, for what is
Speaker 2: by all accounts, you know, a lower budget affair here,
Speaker 2: and the effects here of the flying spaceship look really solid.
Speaker 2: I like it.
Speaker 3: So in the scene where the spaceship flies over the
Speaker 3: surface of the Earth, we meet the character Jimmy Fay
Speaker 3: as himself here. He is a TV presenter from Channel
Speaker 3: five in Oakland, California, which they say is an all
Speaker 3: black TV station, and he's on scene reporting on the
Speaker 3: fact that quote. As you probably know, several local mystics
Speaker 3: have predicted a landing from space this afternoon here at
Speaker 3: this spot opposite the Sector five government building, in the
Speaker 3: person of a black musician and thinker named Son Raw.
Speaker 3: So apparently the backstory is that Sun Raw disappeared while
Speaker 3: traveling in Europe on tour in nineteen sixty nine, and
Speaker 3: now several years later he returns to Earth in his
Speaker 3: glorious spaceship with his what they called his intergalactic myth
Speaker 3: science Solar Orchestra, and then Jimmy Fay says, upon landing here,
Speaker 3: he will reveal to the world his so called plan
Speaker 3: for the salvation of the Black Race. So the spaceship
Speaker 3: sets down in the middle of a field, and Jimmy
Speaker 3: Fay seems at first not to believe his own eyes.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think maybe the implication is that
Speaker 3: he was initially reporting on this story like ironically, like Haha,
Speaker 3: what a joke you know this is? But then he
Speaker 3: sees the ship land and he's shaken. He's like, what's
Speaker 3: this going to mean? So he goes on reporting on it,
Speaker 3: and then along with the crowd, he runs up to
Speaker 3: the ship to greet Sun Raw and his crew as
Speaker 3: they come out of the spaceship. By the way, like
Speaker 3: the raw eyeball sirens are blasting the whole time. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And so Sun Raw disembarks with his retinue and they're
Speaker 3: all dressed in these gold and billowing capes.
Speaker 2: Wind machine blasting. This movie makes great use of wind.
Speaker 3: Machines awesome, and the costumes of Egyptian deities. You've got
Speaker 3: solar orbs, you have a Nubis and Horus all marching
Speaker 3: out with the band following playing music behind them. So
Speaker 3: it's like a marching jazz free jazz orchestra band coming
Speaker 3: out of the spaceship with these figures dressed like gods
Speaker 3: from ancient Egypt. It's just awesome.
Speaker 2: And Jimmy Fay is here to report. They bring out
Speaker 2: a like a crystal clear space helmet. Yeah, they present
Speaker 2: it to him, and I want to also mention that
Speaker 2: the guy bringing it out, he walks kind of like
Speaker 2: he's on the surface of the moon. This is apparently
Speaker 2: something that was a feature of some of the orchestra performances,
Speaker 2: walking like this. So he brings this out. Jimmy Fay
Speaker 2: puts it on, and I guess it allows Jimmy Fay
Speaker 2: to is it like an interpreter helmet, I don't know,
Speaker 2: somehow allows them to communicate directly with his brain.
Speaker 3: It's like a radio helmet to transmit sun Raw consciousness
Speaker 3: into Jimmy Fay's brain. I think, well, like he puts
Speaker 3: it on and then there's you know, keyboard madness going
Speaker 3: into his head and Sundraw is inside his head saying
Speaker 3: I am the altered Destiny, I am the living myth
Speaker 3: and so in this scene and then also it like
Speaker 3: triggers Jimmy Fay to ask questions about what's going on,
Speaker 3: or either he or somebody says, what is the power
Speaker 3: of your machine? And Sunraw's answer is music, and he
Speaker 3: goes on to say more. There's more monologuing in this scene.
Speaker 3: But I also love the way that the radio helmet
Speaker 3: is held up like like a chalice, like it is
Speaker 3: a the sacred cup of ice, you know, being held
Speaker 3: up like that, but it's receiving these signals either from
Speaker 3: space or from cosmic sun Sun Raw consciousness. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: so I think maybe we'll stop there and because that
Speaker 3: that sort of like sets up the the main themes
Speaker 3: of the movie. But after this we're gonna have continued
Speaker 3: themes of Sun Raw in conflict with the overseer trying
Speaker 3: to break through and reach the people of Earth. A
Speaker 3: lot of the story is building toward a planned concert
Speaker 3: that Sunraw and his orchestra are going to play in
Speaker 3: at the end of the movie, I think at at
Speaker 3: an Oakland music venue. So a lot of the movie
Speaker 3: is set specifically in Oakland, California. But then there are
Speaker 3: these also these other scenes that intercut in between. There's
Speaker 3: one interesting scene that we probably talk about a bit
Speaker 3: of Sun Raw appearing to and preaching to the kids
Speaker 3: at the Oakland Youth Center. So they're just kid teenagers
Speaker 3: hanging out there and Sunraw appears to them and tries
Speaker 3: to sort of recruit them to his cause, or at
Speaker 3: least speak wisdom to them. I don't know if the
Speaker 3: recruiting is explicitly the goal, but he is appearing like
Speaker 3: a wandering preacher who is there to tell them truths
Speaker 3: that they are not ready to hear, and so we
Speaker 3: sort of met with skepticism, but he also breaks through
Speaker 3: a bit by speaking wisdom about their lives, about like
Speaker 3: racial inequality and injustice and about you know, things that
Speaker 3: people don't usually want to acknowledge about their lives. So
Speaker 3: he kind of wins some tentative converts from this appearance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great sequence in part because it's like
Speaker 2: it's very obviously a real community center and it has
Speaker 2: almost exclusively non actors in it. You know, it's like
Speaker 2: actual youth, actual children that are asking these questions. And
Speaker 2: for me, someone who grew up on watching se Me
Speaker 2: Street from the late seventies and early eighties, it has
Speaker 2: very much that kind of that kind of feel. You know,
Speaker 2: this this film is steeped in nineteen seventies and nos.
Speaker 2: So if you have any amount of nostalgia for that
Speaker 2: time period, you know it's going to connect with you.
Speaker 2: But yeah, sun Ross speaks to them, and I'm going
Speaker 2: to read some of what he says here. This is
Speaker 2: a bridge. But he says because they're asking him, like,
Speaker 2: are you real? What are these crazy shoes you're wearing?
Speaker 2: When does this outfit, you know, make fun of his shoes? Yea, yeah,
Speaker 2: they got those moon shoes. And he says, how do
Speaker 2: you know I'm real? I'm not real. I'm just like you.
Speaker 2: I do not come to you as a reality. I
Speaker 2: come to you as the myth. I came from a
Speaker 2: dream that the Black Man dreamed long ago. I'm actually
Speaker 2: a present sent to you by your ancestors. And he
Speaker 2: seems to win people over, you know, there were some
Speaker 2: doubters and people are like, yeah, yeah, I think I'm
Speaker 2: understanding what he's laying down.
Speaker 3: There will be a scene also later in the movie
Speaker 3: where some of the teenagers are wrestling with the accusation
Speaker 3: that Sounra sold out.
Speaker 2: Yeah plant by the overseer, you know very much. They're like, oh,
Speaker 2: he doesn't want to save you. He just wants to
Speaker 2: make money off of you. And so whether it's kind
Speaker 2: of clever how the film you know, plays with this
Speaker 2: idea of like you know, I mentioned how not everybody
Speaker 2: was like, oh, the Sunra guy is great, Like some
Speaker 2: people are like this is silly or this is you know,
Speaker 2: he's putting on a show for certain segments of the audience,
Speaker 2: and you know, this film is kind of acknowledging that
Speaker 2: to a certain extent. And also, you know, this is
Speaker 2: kind of anytime you have a you know, a preacher
Speaker 2: or a teacher or a bringer of wisdom, there are
Speaker 2: going to be those that doubt him. And how is
Speaker 2: he going to respond to those voices of doubt?
Speaker 3: Yeah. So another thing that Sunrah does in the middle
Speaker 3: of the movie is he sets up the Outer Space
Speaker 3: Employment Agency.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean basically sets up an office for
Speaker 2: recruiting individuals to board the spaceship and leave for the
Speaker 2: other world colony.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And this is where we meet our NASA operatives. Who
Speaker 2: one of them though not Upton, but the other one
Speaker 2: I guess, like Agent number two comes.
Speaker 3: Here's the same guy who's later one of the killers.
Speaker 2: I think he is he or he looks a lot
Speaker 2: like Agent number two either way. But I love the
Speaker 2: scene where he's coming in and he's like, allow me
Speaker 2: to be blunt, mister Raw, and he's inquiring about about
Speaker 2: working for him, of course, so that he can steal
Speaker 2: sun Raw's secrets of space travel and deliver them to NASA.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he tries to sign up, but the NASA
Speaker 3: scientist is he is very confused by what sun Raw
Speaker 3: explains about his vision for space travel, a sort of
Speaker 3: in that it's not going to be like a capitalist
Speaker 3: material conquest but a musical transformation of our nature. And
Speaker 3: the fact that there is no money, there's no pay Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a great really one of the great comedic
Speaker 2: scenes we see later the with the with the agency
Speaker 2: that he's set up. Here is where we have this
Speaker 2: this character, the street character that is a drunk. We
Speaker 2: see that he is, you know, constantly drinking and scheming
Speaker 2: how he's going to get his next bottle. He comes
Speaker 2: in inquiring about work, and uh. He and Raw have
Speaker 2: a great back and forth about like you know, ros
Speaker 2: talking about being something and nothing and and what has
Speaker 2: this guy been doing? We's been doing nothing. What can
Speaker 2: Raw pay him? Well? Also nothing? Uh, it's it's it's
Speaker 2: rather well put together.
Speaker 3: Let's see, in the middle of the movie, there are
Speaker 3: a lot of scenes of like the overseer just using
Speaker 3: and abusing people. Uh, he's portrayed as a pimp and
Speaker 3: and there. So there's like that leads into this very
Speaker 3: bizarre scene later where the two these two NASA employees
Speaker 3: who are like NASA technicians, but they're also like doing
Speaker 3: evil espionage trying to get son Raw's secretive space technology.
Speaker 3: They end up going to a brothel and then like
Speaker 3: becoming horrible racist and abusive and like beating up these
Speaker 3: two women who work there.
Speaker 2: The overseer has like pushed in their direction.
Speaker 3: Yes, totally. Yeah, so that was I don't know, it's
Speaker 3: like a bizarre tangent in the film, but like absolutely
Speaker 3: evil NASA technicians. And then after that they're like, well,
Speaker 3: we just got to kidnap son Raw. So that leads
Speaker 3: into the Sun Raw kidnapping plot where they they snatch him,
Speaker 3: put him in a van and kidnap him and tie
Speaker 3: him up, and they're going to try to force him
Speaker 3: to give up the secret of his space travel technology
Speaker 3: because they can't figure out how he does it. It's
Speaker 3: also like weird. They torture him by making him listen
Speaker 3: to marching band music. Well it's a marching band playing
Speaker 3: Dixie Yeah yeah, yeah, and so he So son Raw
Speaker 3: is trapped by these horrible NASA technicians, but then he
Speaker 3: is rescued by the young men who believe in him,
Speaker 3: so like they kind of find courage in themselves go
Speaker 3: they like recruit their friends and they go break into
Speaker 3: this facility and they get son Raw out and take
Speaker 3: him to so he makes it to the final concert.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like it's Bubbles Bernard, I think is the
Speaker 2: the other guy, and then there's Tiny the big guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The the NASA plot is dinner. I keep thinking about it,
Speaker 2: you know, the evil NASA operatives who are also ultimately
Speaker 2: going to be kidnappers and assassins. And I guess this
Speaker 2: is also one of those you can't think too literally about.
Speaker 2: But I was thinking this over and I guess it's
Speaker 2: less maybe the idea that NASA wants to steal Sunraw's
Speaker 2: space secrets. I mean it's that too, obviously, but it's
Speaker 2: also like an attempt by a dominator culture to reverse
Speaker 2: engineer some sort of artificial salvation for themselves based on
Speaker 2: the authentic salvation of a partnership culture to lean on
Speaker 2: terms from rain Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade, which
Speaker 2: to be clear, didn't come out till much later eighty seven.
Speaker 2: But in kind of like looking at these ideas, I
Speaker 2: realized there's actually, apparently there's a jazz artist, but an
Speaker 2: him of Nicole Mitchell, who has done some afrofuturist work
Speaker 2: that directly plays with some of these concepts from The
Speaker 2: Chalice and the Play. So sorry tangent there, but I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, that's that's neat.
Speaker 3: How that comes to get well, yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 3: think it's the way it's portrayed is that these two
Speaker 3: NASA technicians represent a just sort of predatory white power
Speaker 3: structure that is sort of like beyond hope of achieving
Speaker 3: like a greater higher consciousness of cooperation or anything like that.
Speaker 3: They're just trying to steal and pillage and dominate.
Speaker 2: And and they're completely incapable of understanding what sunraw Is
Speaker 2: is even doing or offering. Like they're completely you know,
Speaker 2: when they're presented with it, they're like, I don't understand it. Well,
Speaker 2: I guess we've got to kidnap him. In torture him,
Speaker 2: and then when that doesn't work, they're like, I guess
Speaker 2: we need to kill him. We have to assassinate him.
Speaker 3: So I guess here we're coming to describing the end
Speaker 3: of the film, which does involve a big concert, and
Speaker 3: we get to see a lot of the musical performance itself,
Speaker 3: of Sunraw and the orchestra putting together this great and
Speaker 3: beautiful noise here at the concert. But the concert also
Speaker 3: does have an assassination plot. So the NASA technicians break
Speaker 3: in and they end up trying to They put their
Speaker 3: guns on Sunraw, they take aim at him, but intervention
Speaker 3: comes in the form of Sunraw's young disciples, like the
Speaker 3: young men he's been sort of reaching out to throughout
Speaker 3: the film. They get in between the bullet and Son Raw.
Speaker 3: But then we get some like back to life rejuvenation,
Speaker 3: bringing back to life through the magical power, magical technology,
Speaker 3: technology science, myth power of music.
Speaker 2: That's right. Bubbles, I believe, is the one that takes
Speaker 2: a bullet for Sun Raw jumps in front of the
Speaker 2: bullet and it seems like, oh, he's dead, but then
Speaker 2: Sunraw reaches out a hand, yeah.
Speaker 3: And so he's resurrected in the spaceship. So they all
Speaker 3: get to go to their place in space. They appear
Speaker 3: in the spaceship and they move through the pivoting glass door,
Speaker 3: remember the glass door that rotates to let you into
Speaker 3: the sort of wood kars amber room at the heart
Speaker 3: of the spaceship. And so they come in, and then
Speaker 3: through this musical performance, there is also kind of just
Speaker 3: a rapturing, a general rapturing of people from all over
Speaker 3: who are transported to or within the spaceship. There's also
Speaker 3: a discussion at the spaceship at the end about who
Speaker 3: can come in and who can't, or what part of
Speaker 3: somebody might have to be left behind. And so yeah,
Speaker 3: there's this whole discussion of like who is actually going
Speaker 3: to space, and so some many people are taken away
Speaker 3: with sun Raw into space. And then as we actually
Speaker 3: do get to see the spaceship leave into space at
Speaker 3: the end, and then the Earth just explodes. It's like
Speaker 3: a piece of fruit with a firecracker in it.
Speaker 2: It harkens back to something that Ross says earlier in
Speaker 2: the picture when he's in a car being driven around
Speaker 2: and they have some of his attendants with him. He says,
Speaker 2: if the planet takes hold of an altered destiny. There's
Speaker 2: hope for everyone, but otherwise, the death sentence upon this
Speaker 2: planet still stands. Everyone must die, and here we see
Speaker 2: that happen as he leaves planet Earth. With those who
Speaker 2: listen to his message and embraced the music and were
Speaker 2: brought aboard this cosmic arc, they get to pass on
Speaker 2: to the next world. The rest of the world explodes
Speaker 2: and the perishes and darkness. Yeah so quite I mean again,
Speaker 2: think of this as essentially a concert film. Pretty ballsy
Speaker 2: for your your your concert film to end with the
Speaker 2: destruction of Earth. The entire planet is destroyed. But it
Speaker 2: you know, but but it's not just like gloom and
Speaker 2: doom like it's you know, it's also it is about
Speaker 2: salvation through the music and and then the power of music,
Speaker 2: and we see that in play as well.
Speaker 3: Oh it's a old choice. It is one of the
Speaker 3: most joyful and interesting explosions of planet Earth I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it looks pretty good. Pretty again, I
Speaker 2: especially given the budget that they had to work with,
Speaker 2: a lot of talented people made it work. They really
Speaker 2: stretched those dollars and made the effects worthwhile.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 3: One of the last things we do see in the
Speaker 3: movie is just this fragment of the former sphere of
Speaker 3: Earth spinning in space.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and then that's the end. We don't get
Speaker 2: to see these characters, of all the characters that were
Speaker 2: raptured by Sun Raw, we don't get to see them
Speaker 2: on the off world colony, in this new world or anything.
Speaker 2: But you know, we have the idea that now life
Speaker 2: is going to be better for everyone who took this
Speaker 2: message to heart.
Speaker 3: In the moods where Son Raw wishes the movie had
Speaker 3: just had had more beautiful things in it, I wonder
Speaker 3: if that's what he had in mind, if you wanted
Speaker 3: to focus more on the other side of time, if
Speaker 3: you wanted to focus more on seeing that other life.
Speaker 2: Possibly, so yeah, yeah, you know, yeah. I wonder how
Speaker 2: much of it was it was even necessarily plot based,
Speaker 2: but more about like just visual expression of the ideas.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, but you know, that's that's a version
Speaker 2: of the film we never got. This is the this
Speaker 2: is the version we have, and it's it's it's pretty remarkable.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I read in Space is
Speaker 2: the Place the Life and Times of Sun Raw by
Speaker 2: John Sweed, is that at the time when this movie
Speaker 2: came out it was pretty weird, like like it was
Speaker 2: a weird film in seventy four, but you know, it's
Speaker 2: just it's it's it's become weirder in a way because
Speaker 2: of all the nineteen seventy miss about it, you know,
Speaker 2: all this nostalgia, you know, another time, and it's no
Speaker 2: longer the contemporary world in some respects. Though at the
Speaker 2: same time, obviously a lot of the messages of the
Speaker 2: film still resonate today. It is. Yeah, it is just
Speaker 2: such a resonant film. It just it some real staying
Speaker 2: power and it's absolutely a joy to check out, totally. Yes, Yeah,
Speaker 2: And you know, to whatever extent it draws people into
Speaker 2: the music of Sun Raw, Yeah, I think that's tremendous
Speaker 2: as well. Certainly, I think this was the main way
Speaker 2: I learned about Sunrise. I knew, you know, I'm interested
Speaker 2: in I've always been interested in in the nineteen seventies
Speaker 2: and nineteen seventies cinema and then to a certain degree,
Speaker 2: you know, space music. So this, this drew me in
Speaker 2: and has led me to explore some more of Sunraw's
Speaker 2: music outside of this, and again he's been highly influential.
Speaker 2: There are any number of people who list Sunraw as
Speaker 2: a primary influence as someone who really got them interested
Speaker 2: in music in general and specifically different forms of jazz. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, that space is the place. We're going to
Speaker 2: go ahead and close the episode out here, but we'd
Speaker 2: love to hear from everyone out there if you have
Speaker 2: thoughts on Space is the place you have thoughts on
Speaker 2: the music and the enigma of sun Raw right in,
Speaker 2: we would love to hear from you. Just a reminder
Speaker 2: that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science
Speaker 2: and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 2: On Wednesdays we do a short form episode, and on
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Speaker 2: username is weird Ouse. We have a nice list of
Speaker 2: all the films we've covered over the years, and sometimes
Speaker 2: a peek ahead of what comes next. And wherever you
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